GUEST WRITER KATHYRN VAN BEEK pays tribute to Auckland's shady lady

Kathryn Van Beek | Oct 19, 2015 | 6 min read

‘K’Road’s
colour under threat of whitewash,’ said the headline -- but the red
lights are already turning off. The Pink Pussy Cat is now an
immigration consultancy, the Pleasure Chest signs have been sold on
trademe, and the bare-chested nymphette on the Vegas Girl building,
who’s presided over the street since the Seventies is being
retired.

Saint
Kevin’s Arcade -- the grand, Neo-Greek building that’s home to
grungy music venues, a leather repair business, a vegan shop, a
clutch of ever-changing second hand stores and the iconic Alleluya
Cafe -- has been bought by a former Shortland Street actor.

An
unnamed source says the actor made his fortune in Grey Lynn, where
the last of the blue and yellow villas have been painted beige.

A
pre-European travel route, Karangahape Road is the oldest street in
Auckland – and the most notorious street in the country.

Today
it’s a kilometre of ‘anything goes’ that connects staid Queen
Street and moneyed Ponsonby. One end finishes next to the upmarket
Langham Hotel and the other morphs into Great North Road -- a street
that is itself embracing change, with high-end apartment buildings
springing up along the Grey Lynn corridor like magic crystal trees.

K’Road
is a place where different scenes and cultures exist side by side,
and that incongruity is part of its appeal. Poets, street workers,
street artists, fine artists, rough sleepers, drug addicts, latte
sippers, drag queens, musicians and the people who love them brush up
against each other during colourful days and hedonistic nights.

But
K’Road wasn’t always such a shady lady.

From
the late 1800s to the Sixties it was the place to be, and people came
from far and wide to shop at her stylish department stores. Rendells
made an appearance in 1911, and in 1926 George Courts Department
Store opened and Saint Kevin’s Arcade was completed. Businesses
like Hannah’s and Hallensteins were founded on the street, where
glamorous lighting illuminated late night shoppers and revellers had
an abundance of nearby cinemas and dance halls to choose from
(including the Druid’s Hall in Galatos Street, which is still a
music venue today).

But
in the Sixties K’Road’s fortunes faded, and she was forced to
lower her knickers in order to make a buck. The construction of the
inner-city motorway system required the removal of 15,000 nearby
homes and the displacement of over 50,000 residents, and new shopping
malls lured customers into the suburbs.

K’Road’s shops started to
close, and ‘King of the g-string’ Rainton Hastie moved in.

His
iconic Pink Pussy Cat Club opened in 1963, and the street was filled
with the roar of his pink Cadillacs and the lure of his dirty
dancers. This new permissiveness opened the doors for LBGT culture.
New Zealand’s first lesbian social club opened on the street,
followed by other gay venues such as Legends, Staircase and Urge Bar.

When
I met K’Road in 1999 it was love at first sight. I’d just moved
to Auckland and the city seemed big, brash and unfriendly. Walking
along K’Road felt like walking into another country.

Back
then the air was thick with the aromas of frying food, second hand
clothes, coffee, stale sweat, clove cigarettes, vomit and the
ubiquitous Nag Champa incense. The street’s seedier elements made
it a safe haven for anyone creative or different. It was unlike
anything I’d experienced before – but it also felt like coming
home.

I
bought bright saris from the Indian store and hung them in the
windows of my curtainless flat (the one where grass grew between the
floorboards in the kitchen). I experimented with glorious green eye
shadow from Rendells. I got stuck inside a Sixties dress I was trying
on in the changing room of the Salvation Army store and had to be
rescued by a shop assistant.

Back
then Brazil Café was set up in the old Mercury Theatre foyer, and
that’s where you went if you wanted a coffee that felt like a punch
in the face. We’d scale the terrifyingly step ladder to get to the
old bus seats upstairs, and watch cockroaches scuttle across the
walls as we ate bagels studded with fat capers.

In
the evenings we sang karaoke at Kamo alongside tall and gorgeous drag
queens.

I
got a job working in one of the vintage stores in Saint Kevin’s
Arcade, and made savvy purchases of sequinned gowns, spray-on pants
or red cowboy boots almost every week. Our customers included
students, stylists and thieves. One Saturday someone ripped an
American bomber jacket from my hands and ran down the steps into
Myers Park with it. I chased after them with a broom, but I didn’t
get it back.

Arriving
on K’Road on weekend mornings, I’d often cross paths with people
who were still wrapped up in the night before. Cleaning up puddles of
urine outside the store was an unsavoury morning ritual, but just
part of the deal.

My
sister worked in the leather store further down the arcade. She and I
started a band and we spent many evenings walking up and down K’Road
with a bucket of homemade flour and water glue pasting up gig
posters.

Other evenings were spent as performers and audience members
at venues like The Naval and Family (pictured), The Thirsty Dog, Edens Bar and
The Wine Cellar.

But
K’Road isn’t just about rock and roll - it’s also a place of
Chinese supermarkets, alternative therapies, Rainbow Youth, hip hop
and tattoo parlours. It’s a place where you can attend a talk or a
festival, take a sewing, juggling or life drawing class, and rub
shoulders with the beautiful and the damned.

This
is the allure of K’Road in 2015 – but she’s about to reinvent
herself once again.

The
street that’s seen everything is about to undergo some radical
surgery – including a full-body lift and a heart transplant. The
City Rail Link – a project designed to improve Auckland’s public
transport network – is kicking into gear, and a new train station
on K’Road will flood the street with commuters. More housing
options in the area are proposed, and the street seems set to morph
back into the society lady she was in the first half of last century.

But
as she slides under the anaesthetic, her heartrate slows.

Today,
many of the shops in Saint Kevin’s Arcade are closed. Tenants have
been moved on, and signs that say ‘more magic is on its way’ hang
in the empty windows. The arcade has been owned by various people of
the years, but for decades its patron saint has been Peter Hawkesby,
who runs Alelluya Café.

Peter
makes a divine Jewish ginger cake, has supported countless creative
people in a myriad of different ways, and once admonished me for
smoking a cigarillo in my band’s promotion photos because he
thought I was a bad influence.

Sometime
between now and Christmas Alelluya will also close, and established
businesses like Karen Walker will move in. The influence of luxury
stores like Louis Vuitton, Prada, Christian Dior and Gucci, now
gleaming baubles on downtown Queen Street, is creeping up the hill.

K’Road
will become more like Newmarket, and the colourful people of the
street will find somewhere else to go.

Today,
you can see still hand-drawn comic strips pasted on power poles. But
today, the party that fare-welled the Vegas Girl is already fading
into folklore.

K’Road
is dead. Long live K’Road.

Kathryn Van Beek completed a writing degree at UNITEC’s School of Performing and Screen Arts and a Master’s degree at Victoria University’s Institute of Modern Letters before enjoying a belated misspent youth as a bass guitar player in a clutch of obscure Auckland bands. Lately she has been writing short stories, which have appeared in Headland, Hue and Cry, Pot Roast and Aerodrome. She has a secret zine project called Frisson, and hopes to publish a collection of short stories one day.

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